You're reading: Putin spokesman accuses Novaya Gazeta newspaper of “stealing” Kremlin info

NOVO-OGARYOVO, near Moscow - President Vladimir Putin's spokesman has accused Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta of "stealing" preparatory information for a meeting on Monday between Putin and his former election campaign proxies.

On Tuesday, Novaya Gazeta carried an article that branded Monday’s
meeting as “a lot of theater” and reprinted a supposed scenario for the
event that it claimed to have got hold of several days before and that
allegedly largely coincided with what was said during the event.

“There are no public politics in Russia – certain divisions of the
presidential administration have long been trying to imitate them,” the
article said.

“The proxies are people who did some preparatory work for that
meeting and with whom some preparatory work was done before. Many of
them, particularly actively, transferred a tremendous number of
questions to the presidential administration. The questions were
naturally generalized, summarized, systematized and were actively used
during preparations for the event,” Dmitry Peskov told reporters on
Tuesday.

Questions are put together in advance before any event of this kind
because this “makes it possible to feel the real pulse,” Peskov said.

“And this is actually what Novaya Gazeta stole. Novaya Gazeta also
stole the president’s introductory speech and posted it on its website –
as you know, the president didn’t make any introductory speech,” the
spokesman said.

“They stole standard documents, which are prepared for each meeting.
It’s the job of aides to get such documents read, and it’s the right of
the president to choose to make use of this practice or not,” Peskov
said.

He confirmed that the questions that had been prepared in advance were asked during the meeting.

“They did steal, but not what they had meant to. We found where they
stole it from, let’s put it like this. But let that be a matter for
their own conscience to deal with – those are not secret documents. If
they enjoy digging through somebody else’s homework, okay, let them do
it,” he said.